EVA awarded two new grants from The Tavistock Trust for Aphasia

The EVA Park research team has completed a three year project showing that EVA Park can be used successfully to provide virtual language stimulation for people with aphasia. Twenty people had 5 weeks access to EVA Park, with daily sessions from a support worker, in which they conversed, carried out role plays and had group discussions. Results showed that the EVA Park intervention was very well received and brought about significant improvements on a measure of functional communication.

City, University of London has now been awarded two new grants by The Tavistock Trust for Aphasia to extend their research with EVA Park. The first project will employ a software developer who will transform the technology from a prototype to a version that can be released for general usage. The other project will further explore the therapeutic potential of EVA Park. Using single case experimental designs it will investigate whether EVA Park can be used to deliver specific language treatments, for example targeting word finding or sentence building. Both projects will produce freely available manuals and guidance materials, so that other centres can run the software independently and exploit the therapeutic opportunities of EVA Park.

Professor Jane Marshall, who leads the Eva Park team, commented: ‘We are keen for EVA Park to become a mainstream therapy resource that is widely available to people with aphasia. This funding from the Tavistock Trust for Aphasia is a major step forward in making this happen’.